Certain Girls » (Reprint)

Jennifer Weiner wowed critics and readers with Good in Bed -- a savvy debut that took "chick lit" to new heights. Fans fell in love with the heroine, Cannie -- a zaftig entertainment journalist who could give any of the Sex and the City girls a run for their stilettos. When In Her Shoes was adapted into a Hollywood hit, and Goodnight, Nobody hit the bestseller list, Weiner officially transcended One Hit Wonder status.

Readers fell in love with Cannie Shapiro, the smart, sharp-tongued, bighearted heroine of Good in Bed who found her happy ending after her mother came out of the closet, her father fell out of her life, and her ex-boyfriend started chronicling their ex-sex life in the pages of a national magazine.

Now Cannie's back. After her debut novel -- a fictionalized (and highly sexualized) version of her life -- became an overnight bestseller, she dropped out of the public eye and turned to writing science fiction under a pseudonym. She's happily married to the tall, charming diet doctor Peter Krushelevansky and has settled into a life that she finds wonderfully predictable -- knitting in the front row of her daughter Joy's drama rehearsals, volunteering at the library, and taking over-forty yoga classes with her best friend Samantha.

As preparations for Joy's bat mitzvah begin, everything seems right in Cannie's world. Then Joy discovers the novel Cannie wrote years before and suddenly finds herself faced with what she thinks is the truth about her own conception -- the story her mother hid from her all her life. When Peter surprises his wife by saying he wants to have a baby, the family is forced to reconsider its history, its future, and what it means to be truly happy.

Radiantly funny and disarmingly tender, with Weiner's whip-smart dialogue and sharp observations of modern life, Certain Girls is an unforgettable story about love, loss, and the enduring bonds of family.

The Washington Post - Laura Zigman

In the emotional core of the book, Weiner portrays with tear-jerking precision both the long, dark shadows of a painful childhood and the excruciatingly small window of blissful closeness that parents get to enjoy with their kids before they grow up and start to know better. Weiner, who in interviews talks about growing up Jewish in a non-Jewish Connecticut town, dealing with her own parents' divorce and being plus-size herself, is a self-professed outsider, and it's that nose-pressed-up-against-the-glass quality that gives her writing such a punch. It's what makes her wish-fulfillment, happy-ending plots forgivable, and it's what makes Certain Girls the kind of book that gets under your skin, reminding you what it felt like to listen to your friend snap her retainer in the dark during a sleepover when you were 13 and capturing exactly what it feels like now, watching your child grow away from you and praying that someday she comes back.